As a child, I lived in the far reaches of the city, then in the suburbs of Chicago. I didn’t know much about the downtown area, nearly twenty miles away by electric train, except that I always looked forward to my infrequent trips there. My mom treated me every holiday, taking me downtown to see the Christmas windows of the department stores. My favorites were always the windows of the iconic Marshall Field’s (now Macys) on State Street.
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Marshall Field’s Christmas Memories Video on YouTube
by Electropickle Productions
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That’s why I used Marshall Fields as the model for Westbrook, the main setting for HOLIDAY IN CRIMSON and NIGHTMARE IN CRIMSON, my related holiday romantic suspense novels from Entangled Publishing. In thinking about a holiday romantic mystery, I knew I wanted to use a department store like the one I loved as a child. I wanted to involve the Christmas windows. And I wanted the murder victim to be Santa Claus. No, wait! Not the real Santa. The department store one. Rather the one dressed as Santa for the annual Christmas party. Okay, so I have a bizarre sense of humor. I killed him twice!
In Holiday in Crimson...
Westbrook Department Store’s Christmas party wasn’t that wild--but Santa ended up dead and now window designer Shelby Corbin suddenly finds herself the prime suspect in his murder. While CEO Rand McNabb's romantic attentions both thrill her and frighten her, is Westbrook’s impossibly sexy co-owner really helping Shelby search for the truth about that fatal night? Shelby wonders if Rand has a deadlier motive for courting the only possible witness to the crime...
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| From the Video |
In Nightmare in Crimson...
Last holiday, Pippa McNabb's faithless husband was found murdered in a Santa suit after a Christmas party. Another year, another Christmas party, and another dead Santa – this time, run down by eight tiny reindeer and a sleigh. And now Pippa is the prime suspect. Sexy sleigh driver Sky Thornton seems intent on helping her, but is the man who knows too much about her really trying to clear her name, or is he trying to frame her for a murder he committed?
I enjoyed creating these intricately plotted (and connected) romantic mysteries. A fun task, and fun stories, which I hope readers will make readers smile.
With 95 novels and seven million books in print, Patricia Rosemoor is fascinated with "dangerous love" – combining romance with danger. She has won a Golden Heart from Romance Writers of America and two Reviewers Choice and two Career Achievement Awards from RT BOOKreviews, and in her other life, she teaches Popular Fiction and Suspense-Thriller Writing, credit courses at Columbia College Chicago.
You’ll find Patricia at http://PatriciaRosemoor.com or at https://www.facebook.com/PatriciaRosemoorAuthor
@Prosemoor is her Twitter handle
6 comments:
Hi, Sarah --
Thanks for having me as your guest. Holiday in Crimson and Nightmare in Crimson are going to be available this month packaged together -- Crimson Duet -- at a discounted price. Happy Holidays to you and to your readers.
Patricia
I love looking at the Christmas decorations in the windows of Macys and like stores. Usually, we would go to San Francisco. Now days we live in Bend, OR and no big stores that decorate. :(( Your books sound intriguing.
Marshall Field's no longer exists. Now Macy's. So unfortunate that Field's had to be sold. It was iconic, a Chicago landmark for the 20th Century.
I remember looking in Holiday decorated store windows when I was about six or seven and falling in love with a 'real' xylophone, as opposed to the 'baby' one I had at home. I knew it cost too much for my parents to buy for me. Imagine my surprise when I got it for Christmas that year! I know Mom and Dad sacrificed to buy it for me.
I was able to visit a friend and her husband in the Chicago suburbs in the late 1980's. They took me downtown so I could see Marshall Fields...an amazing store! and the decorations (windows and throughout the store) were amazing. The stuff of fantasies! How fun to take an iconic building with such great personal memories and use it for inspiration for your novels!
Patricia, These stories sound like a lot of fun. Christmas and murder just go together. Especially, when it's the jolly old elf in a red suit. Fun post. I'll look for your stories.
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